PENDLETON, Ore. (AP) — A white supremacist gang has been linked to several assaults in Pendleton, but the town’s police chief has cautioned locals against any worries that supposed members of the European Kindred were inciting a wave of violence.
“Pendleton doesn’t have a full-fledged European Kindred population,” Stuart Roberts said.
There may be six or seven men, mostly “couch surfers,” living from place to place and stealing items to buy drugs, Roberts said.
“It’s not like they have a clubhouse or anything like that,” he said.
Gangs have been in Pendleton for years, and police deal with many people “more or less enamored with the ideology” of white supremacy or other gangs, the chief said. But Pendleton usually doesn’t have the same vandalism or more serious gang-related crimes that have happened in Hermiston, Ore., and the Walla Walla Valley.
European Kindred — often called EK — was formed by two inmates in 1988 in the Snake River Correctional Institution. The gang has grown beyond prison walls, with about 300-350 members in Oregon prisons and a hundred or more living in Portland, the East Oregonian reported.
